The Road to Ithaca (Martin Bora)
The Road to Ithaca (Martin Bora) book cover

The Road to Ithaca (Martin Bora)

Paperback – March 14, 2017

Price
$14.95
Format
Paperback
Pages
352
Publisher
Bitter Lemon Press
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1908524805
Dimensions
5.25 x 1.13 x 7.75 inches
Weight
12.8 ounces

Description

Review Praise for the series:“TIN SKY is the best crime novel of the month. Terror and suspicion on the Eastern Front. We hail a bold series set in the Second World War. This fine novel is packed with tense moments and moral ambiguity.’ Times“In TIN SKY Pastor effectively melds a well-constructed whodunit with a grim portrayal of the Eastern front.” PW Starred Review“A DARK SONG OF BLOOD is historical crime fiction at its best, vividly re-creating the atmosphere of a city occupied by an increasingly desperate army. ‘ Sunday Times “The historical milieu of these books is grim, but Pastor’s character examinations are precise and engrossing.’ Kirkus“The tone of LIAR MOON has a flu-like grimness, appropriate the 1943 setting. Pastor is excellent at providing details (silk stockings, movie magazines, cigarettes) that light up the setting.” Booklist“Pastor succeeds at painting a memorable picture of Fascist Italy through the lens of ordinary police procedure carried out under extraordinary circumstances.”Publishers Weekly“An impressive and intelligent novel.” The Times “LUMEN’s plot is well crafted, her prose sharp… a disturbing mix of detection and reflection.”Publisher’s Weekly“And don’t miss LUMEN by Ben Pastor. An interesting, original and melancholy tale.” Literary ReviewPraise for the series:“TIN SKY is the best crime novel of the month. Terror and suspicion on the Eastern Front. We hail a bold series set in the Second World War. This fine novel is packed with tense moments and moral ambiguity.’ Times“In TIN SKY Pastor effectively melds a well-constructed whodunit with a grim portrayal of the Eastern front.” PW Starred Review“A DARK SONG OF BLOOD is historical crime fiction at its best, vividly re-creating the atmosphere of a city occupied by an increasingly desperate army. ‘ Sunday Times “The historical milieu of these books is grim, but Pastor’s character examinations are precise and engrossing.’ Kirkus“The tone of LIAR MOON has a flu-like grimness, appropriate the 1943 setting. Pastor is excellent at providing details (silk stockings, movie magazines, cigarettes) that light up the setting.” Booklist“Pastor succeeds at painting a memorable picture of Fascist Italy through the lens of ordinary police procedure carried out under extraordinary circumstances.”Publishers Weekly“An impressive and intelligent novel.” The Times “LUMEN’s plot is well crafted, her prose sharp… a disturbing mix of detection and reflection.”Publisher’s Weekly“And don’t miss LUMEN by Ben Pastor. An interesting, original and melancholy tale.” Literary Review About the Author Ben Pastor: Ben Pastor, born in Italy, lived for thirty years in the United States, working as a university professor in Vermont, and is now back in her home country. She is the author of other novels including The Water Thief and The Fire Waker (set in Roman times and published to high acclaim in the US by St. Martin’s Press), and is considered one of the most talented writers in the field of historical fiction. In 2008 she won the prestigious Premio Zaragoza for best historical fiction. She writes in English.

Features & Highlights

  • The fifth in the Martin Bora WWII mystery series. In May 1941, Wehrmacht officer Bora is sent to Crete, recently occupied by the German army, and must investigate the brutal murder of a Red Cross representative befriended by SS-Chief Himmler. All the clues lead to a platoon of trigger-happy German paratroopers, but is this the truth?
  • Bora takes to the mountains of Crete to solve the case, navigating his way between local bandits and foreign resistance fighters. With echoes of Claus von Stauffenberg, Bora is torn between his duty as an officer and his integrity as a human being.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(111)
★★★★
25%
(93)
★★★
15%
(56)
★★
7%
(26)
23%
(84)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Another good book from "Ben Pastor"

Another good book from "Ben Pastor", but I did not like it as much as previous books in this series. As a retired career military officer with service in combat units worldwide, some of the story line presented scenarios that are good reading but improbable. Martin Bora is too lucky and has logistics support and command support from a dream world. Character development was good.
4 people found this helpful
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A mystery s “real” as the political narratives by historians

In early June 1941, Martin Bora, a captain in the German Abwehr (Intelligence), is sent to Crete to pick up cases of wine for the German embassy in Moscow, but as soon as he lands, he is ordered to investigate the brutal shooting death of a Swiss national that may have been committed by German paratroopers. This story is less about a straight forward police procedural than describing the atmosphere in Crete recently conquered by the Germans. As Bora searches for the truth behind the shooting, we find ourselves drawn into the multifaceted Cretan political landscape of German conquerors, neutral expats, local Greek constabulary, resistance fighters and fugitive Spanish rebels. As with the previous novels, a complex, nuanced picture of occupied Crete emerges as Bora travels to the interior of the island in search of a key witness to the shooting. Along the lines of other authors such as Phillip Kerr and Alan Furst, the tone is one of ambiguity and individual conflicts. ... What I enjoyed was Bora’s soul searching as he seeks his witness. He is conflicted, caught between the two worlds of his strict Prussian background (integrity) and his obligations as an officer in the Wehrmacht (duty). Pastor draws explicit parallels between Bora’s journey into the heart of Crete and Odysseus’s Odyssey. The author alternates between Bora’s personal entries into his diary (first person) and the main narrative (third person), which adds to the personal dilemmas faced by Bora. As I moved deeper into the narrative, I forgot at times that this was a mystery.

I received a free advanced reader's copy of this book from the publisher and was under no obligation to grant it a favorable review. The full review can be found at MyShelf.com.
4 people found this helpful
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A great writer but this novel was way too long with far too many charcters to keep track of.

This is the 5th in the Ben Pastor's series per martin Bora a Wehrmacht Captain during the Second World War. The problem I had with the novel is that it stretches a story that didn't need nearly 400 pages to tell it. This is a murder mystery as are all of the Bora novels requiring the skill of Captain Bora to uncover the perpetrator.

The action is slow and very hard to follow. Bora needs to find an eye-witness who took photos of the slaughter to decide who was/is at fault. It is that long laborious quest by the author who: walked, drove, hiked those very sights to get an authentic presentation for her hero Bora. The side plots, esp. Bora's constant conflict with Luftwaffe 'Waldo' Preger. That particular part's resolution as to what caused the conflict was of gain in terms of what motivated the two men but the time spent in building up to it was a waste of words and scenery. I felt had Pastor spent a brief time in the beginning of having the two characters present their social positions as was finally done at nearly the end of the novel, it would have allowed more time to digging deeper into the universal evil the Soviet Union - GRU had throughout the world i.e. discussion of the Spanish Civil War and the all too short details of GRU penetration in 1926 China - a sentence or two referencing Mikhail Borodhin's impact would have been of gain. The 'retirement' of the 'uncovered perpetrator' was patented NKVD ruthless dealing with a 'problem'.

Pastor is a brilliant writer - this was a very long....bluntly too long novel in a very confined place. There were too many characters and, save for the Greek detective none that interested me at akl.
2 people found this helpful
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As described

As described.
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Five Stars

This writer is heads above. This title particularly dense and interesting.
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Five Stars

One of my favorite fictional characters
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An unwelcome departure from an otherwise fine series

I've read all of Ben Pastor's Martin Bora novels with the exception of the first one as the plot didn't interest me. "The Road to Ithaca" was a struggle for me to get through compared to the other books. Instead of picking up where the last one ("Tin Sky") left off in 1944 with Bora as a Wermacht Major he's back to being a Captain and it's 1941.

Bora's a counterintelligence officer in the Abwehr (military intelligence) assigned as a general's aide in Moscow two weeks before Operation Barbarossa kicks off. Somehow he lands the ridiculous task of being dispatched to Crete (on the heels of the Reich's invasion of the island) to procure some cases of wine for NKVD chief Lavrenti Beria. Once there he's derailed on another task to investigate the murder of a Swiss researcher who works for SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler. This new mission launches him on a long, drawn out search of the island for a key witness with the author attempting to make Bora's trials parallel those of Homer's "Ulysses"...it got old very fast. If I wanted to take an English lit seminar I'd sign up for one at the local college.

Also, Bora is even more introspective than usual here and dwells repeatedly on some old chlildhood incident when he was 12 with the son of their country estate's caretaker who is now a Fallschirmjager (paratrooper) on Crete. This navel gazing goes on and on and does little to advance the story and just fills pages.

Things eventually get sorted out and Bora even scores some choice wine before making it back to Moscow. Definitely not as good as the previous books in this series and I'll have to think twice about reading another.
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Mediterranean murder

A gripping detective story - Who machine-gunned to death five people, including a Red Cross official, in a farmhouse in the hills of German-occupied Crete in WWII? A fascinatingly presented journey - I write ‘journey’ because of the continual allusions to Homer’s Odyssey as Wehrmacht officer Martin Bora heads to Crete to buy wine for his superiors. But once there, Bora finds himself diverted into the island’s interior to investigate the mass-killing. The book is long - nearly 400 pages - but lose any of the atmospheric descriptions, any of the discursions, any of the conversations, including Bora’s with himself in his diary entries, and you would have a lesser story. As with so many of the Bitter Lemon books, you can judge a book by its cover - a sepia photograph of an armed patrol of German soldiers heading for a dusty green olive grove perfectly epitomises the setting of the story.
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Three Stars

Too slow for me.